50 Pfennig - Kemnath

Kemnath is a small market town in Upper Palatinate, Bavaria, and this zinc piece is a product of Germany's acute small-denomination coin shortage of the early 1920s — a crisis distinct from the hyperinflation that followed. The Reichsbank's copper and nickel supplies were still effectively exhausted from wartime requisitioning, and hundreds of German municipalities resorted to issuing their own notgeld in metal, most contracting with private die-cutters to produce runs that were never intended for long-term circulation.

Zinc was the default material of necessity. It corrodes readily in humid conditions, which is why surviving examples in unmolested surfaces are harder to find than the mintage figures might suggest.